Unravelling the myriad of sustainability assessments in the agri-food system : role of assessment tools

The agri-food system is a dynamic and complex system where companies work closely together. Societal pressures challenge this system to transform its activities towards more sustainability. Transformation implies a continuous process of measuring progress, learning and seeking new ways to achieve and organize the sustainable development of the system. Given the complexity of the agri-food system and its challenges, a wide diversity of sustainability assessments arises. The rationale of the PhD research is to guide agri-food chain actors in the sustainable development of their firm, farm, food chain, organization or system. The research aims to enable the chain actors to improve and follow up their sustainability by structuring the myriad of sustainability assessments. Although practice based, the research objective and questions answer specific challenges defined in literature. The overall objective is to unravel contextual and procedural aspects necessary to organize and install sustainability assessments focusing on assessment approaches and tool use in practice. To do so, needs of agri-food system actors regarding sustainability assessment were identified. This allowed to define building blocks for sustainable development and construct five types of sustainable development processes in the agri-food system. At farm level, this resulted in a framework for guiding sustainability assessment and on-farm strategic decision making together with an on-demand assessment tool. Next, with this framework, it became possible to structure existing sustainability assessment tools. The dissertation concludes with three take-home messages for agri-food system actors who want to set-up new sustainable development processes: (1) sustainable development processes should be action-oriented and generate actionable knowledge by valuing interaction and knowledge co-creation; (2) strengthen the link between sustainability assessment and strategic decision-making by offering individual trajectories and a complementary use of tools; (3) take into account the influence of a governance structure by incorporating regular reflection moments